Just Not Meant to Be
I am not a morning person. I think the last time I voluntarily woke up early on a regular basis was about 23 years ago and that was only once a week to catch the Smurfs at 7am. Since then, it's only occurred due to some set of obscene circumstances - like work, for example.This morning, I decided to get a jump start and was up at 4:30am and remotely logged into my laptop at work to do some last minute work on a presentation I have today. Thirty minutes later, I notice that for some reason, the laptop battery meter was showing 20 minutes of life left. How could this be?!? Had I forgotten to plug the power supply back? That can't be it since it would have died a long time before this. Had the cleaning people knocked the plug out or run over the power strip switch with their vacuum? Possibly. Well, the only thing to do at this point is to shower and head into work.
Shower, teeth, ears, hair. Shave?? Nah. (A benefit of being Asian is that I can skip a day between shaves and the few slow growing hairs on my chin will still barely be noticeable. A drawback is that I will never be able to grow an Al Borland beard.) Shirt, pants, belt, socks. Fly check #1. (The first noticeable sign of deteriorating mental capacity is that I no longer trust myself to remember to zip my fly so I now need to check several times a day.) Wallet, keys, phone, iPod. Jacket, shoes, work bag.
By 5:35am, I'm at the bus stop waiting for the 30x - the express bus that bypasses the mess of traffic, old ladies with grocery carts, and loud kids otherwise known as Chinatown. 5:45am. Still waiting. Fly check #2. Hmm....there goes the regular 30 bus just down the street. 5:50am. Still waiting....and by myself. Could it be that this bus doesn't start this early in the morning? Damn. Guess I'll walk to the 30 line down the block. 5:58am. Waiting. This sucks. Oh wait. Is that someone walking over? Yes. Someone clearly in his corporate monkey gear, bag slung around his shoulder, is walking towards me...towards me...towards me...and passed me. Damn, he's heading to the 30x stop. Crap. Okay, suck up the ego and admit to him that I'm stupid for not checking the schedule before leaving my house today by turning and following him to the 30x stop that I had just been at for 25 minutes. Click, clack, click, clack. I'm about five steps behind him but I'm sure the hard soles of my dress shoes are eliciting at least a mocking smile at my idiocy if not a full, hearty, struggle-to-contain-yourself internal laugh.
6:05am. 30x bus. 7:10am, I reach my desk with coffee in hand. 7:11am, I read the e-mail that says,
Please be advised that there was a localized power outage in Berkeley this morning. The outage lasted from 2:12AM PST until 5:25AM PST.
So had I hopped online after showering and before leaving the house, I would have known that (1) the first 30x is at 6:05am and (2) the power was back up and I didn't actually have to come into the office early to plug anything back in. Nice.
posted by Peter @ 11:10 AM
3 Comments:
up 430am? that's where you went wrong already. that's just not right.
YAH, WHY YOU UP SO DAMN EARLY??? THIS IS DEF THE NEW PETER.
It's true. 4:30am is not right. At that point, I might as well work a market hour job. Actually, I just found out that our options-trading friend wakes up just about the same time I do. I'm sure it's the combination of the facts that my commute is 3 times longer than his and that for some reason, I move 3 times slower than normal in the mornings that contributes to the fact that I'm waking up at the same time as someone with a market hour job. But still, the fact that he's home by 1:30pm and I'm home some 6 hours after that is a little bit annoying.
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